This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 2, from 1991.
In early December of the year 1872, a ship was sighted that puzzled the crew of another ship – for no one answered hails or signals. The hailed ship seemed in tolerably good shape, though carrying a limited amount of sail and, when boarded, was found to be suffering water damage as though in a past storm. But the chief question in everyone’s mind was-and became for later times: ‘What happened to the crew?’ For no one was aboard.
The windows of what appeared to be the captain’s cabin were covered with boards and canvas, but a skylight was open and there was water in the cabin. Evidently the ship has passed through a storm in the fairly recent past. But where were the people?
Ships have been found through the ages that sail or float in good shape without a crew. The Roman general Galba took one such event as a good omen for his assuming the purple and becoming emperor. A ship bearing a cargo of arms but having no crew drifted into the Spanish harbour of Dertosa; somewhere between Alexandria in Egypt and the port in Spain the crew had vanished – perhaps, it was contended (according to Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, New York: Penguin Books paperback, 1987, p. 253) the gods sent the ship to make easy the path of Nero’s successor. That ancient puzzle was not solved – if the ship was raided and the crew taken into slavery, why were not the arms (of some value in the ancient world), taken as well? In any event, the finding of a ship without a crew, while rare, has been known throughout the ages.
The case of the ship of 1872 became famous; the name was Mary Celeste (Marie Celeste apparently being a mistake in a British record of this event). Mary Celeste was found in excess of five hundred miles from the mainland of Europe, between the Azores islands and Portugal’s coast. She was boarded and taken for salvage, but was impounded by British investigators when she safely made port. A lengthy scrutiny resulted in much suspicion of her rescuers, and a wine stain on deck was mistaken for blood; blood was said to be found on a sword of the captain’s, but this was later found false.
Mary Celeste had carried ten persons: a crew of seven, the captain, his wife, and his baby daughter. The ship was engaged in commercial trade, and had carried a cargo of approximately 1,700 barrels of ‘crude alcohol’.
Theories of the past included piracy and mutiny. Though the British remained suspicious of the circumstances, no one was ever tried for a crime, and no proof ever emerged to clarify the events of this strange happening. If we discount various fictional tales and hoaxes, the mystery remains to our time as one of peculiar interest and evident strangeness.
An amusing little story of recent vintage describes a disappearance of a different nature. In an aquarium it was found that a collection of sea creatures was gradually vanishing. A tank holding examples of such would have inhabitants at the end of the day, but be empty the next morning. A careful watch discovered that an octopus was in the habit of climbing out of its tank, working its way to the tanks of other ‘specimens’, eating them, and making its way back to its own tank before morning. It ‘held its breath’, or ‘held its water’ if you prefer, on those peculiar expeditions.
Now, since we recall the story of the ‘giant’ octopus that was found washed up on a Florida beach (as featured, for instance, at the end of a Scientific American magazine some years ago), we ask: ‘Could a giant octopus have done the deed of disposing of ten people?’ Probably not. If such a thing began to take place, at least some would survive in hiding places – and only one person would provide an adequate meal at any one time; therefore we will discount this theory as unlikely. (Unfortunately I do not have the reference to the tale of the octopus in the aquarium at hand, whose interesting expeditions excite our interest, if not our applause.)
The more modern theory of abduction by UFO may be left aside as well. for we may have in our possession the real key to the mystery. Perhaps the cargo contains, not the answer of crew drunkenness, madness and murder that surfaced at the time, but another and perhaps simpler and more mundane answer. An answer that ‘lets us down’ so that we turn away murmuring: ‘Oh. Is that all it was?’ Reality can be much less interesting and certainly less exciting than bizarre and astounding possibilities.
The answer to our puzzle may well be found in a book by John Harris (Without a Trace, New York: Atheneum, 1981 hardback, Chapter 2, pp. 42-79). His solution (giving credit to a Sir William Crocker for the answer), points to the alcohol carried as cargo. Such barrels had been known to leak and create fumes which could explode if sufficient amounts were involved and a flame or spark caused ignition. The Mary Celeste had a hole in the galley floor which gave access for gas to enter the room and find the kitchen stove. An amount of fumes may have caused a small explosion, runs the explanation, and (pp. 78-79) such an explosion would not leave burn marks or carbon evidence of what happened for others to find later. The evidence for this view is that when the ship was boarded the hatches were found thrown open: exactly what would be done if it was decided to ‘air out’ the below-deck cargo area. Further, evidence was found that a single small boat had been carried on the main hatch, and a lifted rail showed that it had been launched (Harris, p. 48).
The view presented by Harris, then, is that on a possible warning from a small explosion, the captain and crew, suddenly alerted to their danger, threw open the hatches to allow any fumes to escape – and to make certain that there would be no follow-up great explosion, launched the small boat and left the ship to wait out the airing out of the cargo spaces in the hold. In that way they would be away from the ship in the event of a large explosion, and could go back aboard after the wind had cleared the ship of alcohol fumes. (The ‘industrial alcohol’ was intended to be sent to Italy to ‘fortify’ wines, but was not good to be drunk by itself. This type of cargo, according to Harris, had been known to explode, and it was likely that the captain of Mary Celeste was worried that he was, in fact, riding a sort of bomb.)
The view presented by Harris is simple, but does seem adequate to explain the mystery ship. In fact, a small quantity of fumes of alcohol could have been smelled by the cook even without any explosion; he could have notified the captain, who then could have ordered the hatches thrown open and the ship’s boat lowered to take the ten people aboard away from the immediate neighbourhood of Mary Celeste. Did they go too far to be roped to the ship, or forget to rope the small ship to Mary Celeste in the event that the wind might pick up and carry the ship that they had left away from them? Even worse, did they tie to the ship with a faulty knot that slipped and left them at the mercy of the ocean as a freshened wind carried Mary Celeste away from them more quickly than they could row?
The entire scenario makes pretty good sense. The condition of the ship as found showed that it had passed through some rough weather successfully, but was boarded by those who discovered it in fine weather (Harris, p. 48). The ‘alcohol fumes’ solutions seems reasonable enough; if the bad weather was still in force as the ship was abandoned, it might be that the storm in some fashion prevented the waiting people from re-boarding the ship, or perhaps in some fashion caused a problem with a possible tow-line. In any case, Mr Harris is to be congratulated on his presentation of this solution. His work already cited also contains good evidence for the reason for various other sea mysteries, and is well worth the reader’s attention.
Since no trace of the ten people was ever found, writers still exploit the interest inherent in this case, but John Harris seems to have brought forward a simple and possibly true explanation: evidently, if his view is sound, then the sea must have overwhelmed the small boat, and all in it were lost.
